Week 9 - the "Water Tiers" (H-to-O... get it?)

Tier H: Air Force (6-2), Arkansas (4-5 in the toughest division in history), Boston College (6-3), Penn St (4-4), Stanford (5-4), and Utah St (6-3). 

Tier I: Two divisions have to have seven teams to total 128 FBS teams, and right now this is one of those: Cincinnati (5-3), Northern Illinois (6-2), Oregon St (4-4). Pitt (4-5), Rutgers (5-4), Tennessee (4-5), and Chris Petersen's Washington Huskies, at 6-3 in his first season in purple.

Tier J: Houston and Memphis (both 5-3 from the AAC), Nevada (6-3), and three ACC schools: Virginia, North Carolina, and North Carolina St (the Pack is 5-4; the others are 4-5).

Tier K: Two conference leaders from the Sun Belt and Conference USA headline Tier K: Georgia Southern (7-2) and Louisiana Tech (6-3). They're joined by 5-3 Bowling Green and Temple, and 4-5 former champions Texas and Virginia Tech.

Tier L: BYU (5-4), Navy (4-5 after a great game against Notre Dame), Northwestern (freefalling at 3-5), Syracuse (3-6), and 4-5 Toledo and Louisiana-Lafayette.

Tier M: Three 5-3 teams (Central Florida, UTEP, Rice), and three Michigan teams - Central Michigan, Western Michigan, and Big Blue themselves, the Michigan Wolverines, who are NOT happy to be classified with their little brothers...

Tier N: Arkansas St (5-4), Illinois (4-5), Middle Tennessee (5-4), San Diego St (4-4), Texas Tech (3-6), and Wyoming (4-5).

AND finally, our brand new Tier O!: With seven teams in all the tiers from K-P, it was easy to separate out one more tier - we'd said we didn't know why we left out this tier last week; this must have been why! Florida Atlantic (3-6), both Fresno St (3-6) and San Jose St (3-5) from the Mountain West; Texas St (5-3) and Louisiana-Monroe (4-4) from the Sun Belt; and the Pac-12's wild guns from Washington St (2-7).

Week 8 tiers continued - the Ground Floor!

Continuing out of the Basement and up to the Ground Floor with Tiers K through P, the "second quartile", if you will - we refuse to rank teams this early in the season, but these are teams #62 through #96 (there are seven teams in each of these five tiers). Onward!

Tier P:
Colorado (2-6, 0-5 and the lowest team in the Pac12), Indiana (3-4, and the lowest team in the Big Ten at 0-3), Ohio (4-5, 2-3 MAC), Purdue (3-5, 1-3 in the Big Ten alongside Indiana), Texas St (4-3, 2-1 Sun), UAB (4-4, 2-2 C-USA), and Wyoming (3-5, 1-3 MW).

Tier N (no Tier O - don't really have a reason...):
The Sun Belt's 2-1 Arkansas St (4-3), the MAC's Central Michigan (5-4, 3-2) and Western Michigan (3-3, 3-1), the Mountain West's Fresno St (3-5, 2-2) and San Jose St (3-4, 2-1), Rice (4-3, 2-1 C-USA), and South Florida (3-5, 2-2 ACC).

Tier M:
Only Conference USA has two representatives in Tier M - Florida Atlantic (3-5, 2-2) and Texas-El Paso (4-3, 2-1). The other five schools are Michigan (3-5, 1-3 Big 10), Navy (4-4 as independent), San Diego St (4-3, 3-1 MW), Temple (4-3, 2-2 AAC), and Washington St (2-6, 1-4 Pac12). [Michigan should find it appropriate that they're in Tier "M"...yet somehow we doubt they're pleased!]

Tier L:
BYU has fallen all the way to here (4-4 as an independent), alongside Illinois (4-4, 1-3 Big 10), Middle Tennessee (5-3, 4-1 C-USA), Texas and Texas Tech (both 3-5, although the Longhorns have one more win in the Big 12), Toledo (5-3, undefeated at 4-0 in the MAC), and Louisiana-Lafayette (4-3, and also undefeated in conference at 3-0 in the Sun Belt).

Tier K:
The first tier without a losing record includes six different conferences (there's only one tier without duplicate teams from the same conference...and we haven't reached it yet!) starts with Bowling Green (5-3, 3-1 in the MAC), Central Florida (5-2, 3-0) and Cincinnati (4-3, 2-1) from the American Athletic Conference, Georgia Southern (the highest ranked team from the Sun Belt conference at 6-2 and 5-0), Louisiana Tech (5-3, 4-0 C-USA), Nevada (5-3, 2-2 MW), and North Carolina St (4-4, 0-4 in the ACC).